Hello my friends! 

I did it I finally sat and typed something up for my blog for my self imposed Fri/Sat deadline!!

Recently I’ve been out on a few adventures and exploring nature filled places. I find being out in the wild to be so soothing and being outdoors comes with the added bonus of finding some new things to snap and share with you…

I recently spent a sunny day wandering around a wonderful little National trust place called Cubert Common, which is such a beautiful landscape to visit. I even met some new butterflies, specifically Silver-Studded blues! Including this one, isn’t he lovely?! 

Silver-Studded blue (Plebejus argus) is considered to be another of our butterflies that is becoming increasingly rare so it was awesome to see over twenty of them enjoying the sunshine! Literally I’ve taken so many photos of them!!

This small butterfly which has a wingspan of around 3cm is found mainly in heathland where they fly low over the heather – their main caterpillar food plant.

The males are a vibrant blue like this one, while the females are actually browning and nowhere near as showy, both sexes have distinct metallic spots on the lower underwing – these tiny markings are used to help distinguish them from the equally lovely Common Blue.

I cannot get over how pretty they are, they have such big eyes and cute stripy antennae.

I really hope you like this photo and that my nature filled posts spread a little bit of happiness in your direction.

As always thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!

Ps. If you want to see more of Cubert Common why not check out one of my previous posts about it HERE!

Hey friends! 

I’ve got a little one frame to share with you this week, over winter I’ve had a whole bunch of butterflies overwintering in my butterfly house (my fun and fancy shed!) which has been awesome, spookily they timed their wake up alarms to coincide with good weather and I’ve been able to release them all back into the big wide world post-hibernation (yay!!).

Including this little fella, he’s a male Brimstone butterfly who moved into my shed in December – I’ve literally no idea how he got in, but thats not the point…isn’t he pretty!

Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) have angular wings so that when they sit amongst the foliage they resemble leaves and hide from predators.

Folklore suggests we may have actually got the word ‘butterfly’ from these guys as the males wings are fluorescent butter yellow!

While we get loads of Brimstone’s in the garden I’ve never had the chance to raise them, so finding one in my butterfly house was amazing. I like to think that bug-kind knows my shed is a safe space for them (although hopefully not too many spiders have moved in over winter!)

For next week I think I’m gonna try and create a needlework Brimstone.

As always thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!